There Is No Cat

Seventh Roll of Polyfilm Handmade Film From Ukraine

These shots are from the second roll of Polyfilm Ortho I shot in Florida, labelled ”Grainy“.

The first five photos have a mix of black pinholes and white pinholes, something that recurs through these photos.

Six, seven, and eight have mottling.

Nine through twelve all exhibit the mottling of the previous frames, with the added bonus of fogging. There must have been a slight misalignment with this roll because the last photo is on the droppings of emulsion at the end, hence the missing pieces.

Posted at 7:55 PM
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Sixth Roll of Polyfilm Handmade Film from Ukraine

I just got back from a couple of weeks at our condo in Florida. The day before I left to go there, I got a package from Ihor Polyakov with some more of his handmade film. I got five rolls of 120, divided into "Classic" and "Grainy", and six sheets of 4x5. I figured that since I was going to Florida where it was hot, it would be useful to bring some of the film with me to test in hot weather, while leaving the rest for my return to a now much cooler New Jersey. This first roll was the "Classic" film, shot in my Hasselbla 500cm.

The first three photos have a mix of black pinholes and white pinholes, something that recurs through these photos. I had an minor issue with my Hasselblad 500cm that’s visible here where photos two and three overlap slightly. The first one actually looks pretty good; the pinholes are small enough to miss.

The fourth photo shows some of the mottling I had seen in previous versions. Five has something similar, but the dots are smaller. Six is pretty good, some dots and some mottling but really subtly present.

Seven and eight have something that I would describe as measles, maybe just a bad version of what was on the previous frames, but worse. The shadows on the left and right of seven and the right of eight break up badly and look kind of pixelated.

Nine through twelve all exhibit the pixelation of the previous frames, with the added bonus of fogging. Not sure what happened here.

I also shot a holder of 4x5, two sheets, with my Smartflex 3445. One did not show anything; not sure what happened there, but I’m reasonably sure that was my fault, not the film. The second shot is of the Castillo de San Marcos, built between 1672 and 1695. There are a couple of obvious oysters here, and many black and white pinholes visible throughout, but overall this looks pretty good.

Posted at 3:11 PM
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Fifth Roll of Polyfilm Handmade Film from Ukraine

As I mentioned in my previous post, I got a couple of rolls of film from a batch, 160626, that is supposed to address the issues I found in my previous four rolls from batch 260526. I did indeed take it out into the inferno of New Jersey this afternoon, temperatures in the low 100s Fahrenheit, pushing 40 Celsius (I did see temps go above 40C/104F today, but not while or where I was shooting). I loaded a roll in my Pentax 67 and took it to Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook, figuring that photos of its defensive fortifications would be an appropriate thing to shoot on Ukrainian film. I also hoped it would be slightly less hot, which it was, but only by a degree or two.

The first four photos show mottling. It's not clear to me if this is interaction with the paper, or a more subtle instance of the plasticizers showing their presence. It's really obvious in the skies of these photos.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh photos show evidence of another fault, with collections of black dots present in mostly the sky. Seven has the most incidence of this.

I got another blank shot on this roll. The Pentax 67 does something weird when the speed dial is moved accidentally to a place between two settings where it kind of implies that it opened the shutter, definitely brings the mirror up, but doesn't expose anything. It's interesting to compare this with the blank shot in the previous roll. The black dots noted in the previous shots are here in spades.

Shots nine and ten also suffer from extensive dotting. Ten also ran into the end of the roll because I slightly misaligned the film at the beginning and hoped there was enough extra emulsion to cover the half inch difference between the arrow that says 120 inside the camera and the line that's supposed to line up with it. Oops. Missed it by that much. Kind of an interesting look.

It's hard for me to say if this fully addressed the issues with batch 260526; the mottling and the black dots both look to me like they could still come from the plasticizer, or it could be something else. This batch is a definitely improvement from the previous one. Temperatures are supposed to be in the upper 70s and lower 80s Fahrenheit, upper 20s Celsius, tomorrow. If I don't get out tomorrow with a roll in more temperate conditions, I'll try later in the week. Today was definitely a stress test, and I'd like to see what the film does a little farther from the edges of the weather.

Posted at 2:10 AM
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Fourth Roll of Polyfilm Handmade Film from Ukraine

I had ordered four rolls in all of Ihor's homemade film. By roll 4, I knew what to expect (see the previous three blog posts) in the way of faults. I took my last roll on a trip to St. Augustine, Florida, anyway. It turned out to be an interesting test of the effect of heat on the rolls of batch 260526. Florida in late June is not cool; temperatures were pushing 100F/40C most days. I rerolled this roll onto a 620 spool and put it through my Kodak Medalist II. Developed in Rodinal 1:25 for 10 minutes, per Ihor's suggestion, after exposing at EI 50. Five minutes of pre-wash, acid stop bath, five minutes of post fixing wash. The heat had had its way with the film; the artifacts I had seen on the previous rolls were kind of pushed to 11.

The seventh shot for some reason wasn't exposed. Not sure what happened here. But it makes for a pure look at the artifacts this batch encountered.

Ihor sent me a couple more rolls of his film in appreciation for my detailed feedback on batch 260526 that had exposed unexpected issues in his film. The new batch, 160626, should address the issues I found, and was shipped in an envelope that should have protected it from the heat of shipping somewhat. The weather here in New Jersey is now matching what we had in Florida last week; I saw the temperature hit 104F/40C yesterday afternoon. I may take one roll out in the heat to really stress test it and save the other for when it cools down after the long weekend.

Posted at 1:12 PM
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Third Roll of Polyfilm Handmade Film from Ukraine

Shot my third roll of Polyfilm Ortho this past weekend when we were in Brooklyn. I didn't hold off until the Mermaid Parade; I shot it around Sunset Park the day before when we were walking around. Shot in my Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16, the smallest decent medium format camera I have. Per Ihor's suggestion, I shot it at EI 32, and developed in Rodinal 1:25 for 8 minutes. Six minutes of pre-soak, acid stop bath, 5 minutes of post fixer washing, and a final rinse in distilled water and Photo-Flo. I don't think it helped much; I think this batch just has issues.

The first couple of shots seem to have some kind of fog at the edges. I haven't seen this with other rolls of film I've put through the camera.

The third shot starts to show the plasticizer effect, particularly in the sky but also on the brick wall. It gets worse with the fourth shot, particularly in the bricks at top.

In the fifth shot, we start to see signs of mottling too.

The sixth and seventh shots continue the pattern. Seven is particularly dramatic in the plasticizer lines, particularly evident in the lower part of the picture, shown in close-up.

Eight and nine are more of the same. Ten has some dramatic mottling to go with the lines, as well as black holes in the emulsion.

Eleven and twelve dial back the faults. Eleven is kind of blurry, which is on me, not the film. But there are still the issues we've been seeing throughout the roll.

I have one more roll of this to shoot; I'll probably take it to Florida and use it for something that's not critical given the issues I've seen on the first three rolls and expect much the same result. Changing the development process doesn't seem to make a significant difference in the result; 8 minutes worked well from an exposure standpoint, but the artifacts were worse than on roll 2. Ihor and Vitalii have said they think they've figured out what the issues are. I look forward to getting another batch and proving them right.

Posted at 11:03 AM
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Second Roll of Polyfilm Handmade 120 Film from Ukraine

After going back and forth with Ihor and getting recommendations on how to best develop this wacky film of his, I shot a second roll yesterday. I switched from the Kiev 88 to my Hasselblad 500cm, but made a mistake in loading the film that resulted in me getting only 10 frames and having some overlap between them. I gave the film a pre-wash that lasted seven minutes, cut development from 15 minutes to 12, used an acid stop bath as recommended (I usually stop with water), and rinsed after fixing for ten minutes, something I usually avoid because I use an alkaline fixer and hypo washes out of film much more quickly when you use an alkaline fixer.

The first three photos show that the lines I got on the first roll are dramatically less present. They're still there, but less noticeable. They are particularly visible in flat color areas, like the sky. This closeup shows the upper left portion of the third photo where they are visible both in the sky and on the metal of the sculpture.

There is, however, this odd mottling throughout the roll, and given the shapes, I think this may also be an artifact of the plasticizers.

As we get further into the roll, the lines so present on the first roll get harder to find and more localized. In the shot of the diner, they're present mostly to the left of the sign on the roof. In the shot of the Chinese restaurant, they're visible at the left of the frame, but not nearly as disruptive as the previous roll's examples.

The last three photos continue the pattern where the lines are visible primarily at the left of the frame, but less visible than previous. There is more evidence of the hand-coated nature of the film with some verticle lines running through the photos and an occasional black dot where there was probably a bubble or something.

All told, the revised development process improved the film, but I suspect there may be some changes needed in the formulation to lower the level of plasticizers. I don't see this kind of mottling that I got on every shot in the examples I've seen posted elsewhere from other batches by people like Ari Jaaksi and Vitalii Kovalyshyn.

Posted at 1:16 PM
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First Roll of Polyfilm handmade 120 film from Ukraine

I half recalled my friend Andre from L'viv mentioning on Mastodon a while back that a friend of his was making his own film in his garage, so when I saw this video by Ari Jaaksi a few weeks ago, I wasn't totally shocked. It was interesting; Ari's photos turned out quite well from the rolls he had been sent. I looked into the links that Ari posted to his video and found that I could actually buy up to four rolls of this film. I jumped at the chance (you can't really buy it right now, because the production amount is about 30 rolls per month and the queue is full, but it will reopen at some point). My four rolls of 120 Polyfilm showed up on Monday. This morning, Wednesday, I loaded a roll in what seemed to me to be the most appropriate choice to shoot it in, a Kiev 88CM. Ukrainian film, Ukrainian camera. I used a German lens, though, a Carl Zeiss Jena 120mm Sonnar and went to the nearby Twin Lights lighthouse and the town the lighthouse is in, Highlands, New Jersey.

I shot the whole roll, then brought it home and developed it. One of the two recommended developers is Rodinal, which was pretty much the only developer I used until fairly recently. I developed the roll in Rodinal 1:25 for 15 minutes in my PiraMX Developers Helper, which keeps the temperature at a steady 20 degrees Celsius. Let the film dry for a few hours, and scanned it. I'm posting the whole roll. Ihor Poliakov, the guy who makes the film, said in his note that came with the film that it is not perfect, and that's very true. I got some very odd results that I didn't see in the online posts of film from other batches.

This was the roll hanging to dry in the shower after development. The first thing I noticed was the appearance of the exposed emulsion at the top of this strip. That emulsion doesn't spread the entire width of the film, and makes me think this film, or at least this batch, has an issue that other batches didn't. My understanding is that the film is coated twice, once with something that actually sticks to the base and once with a photosensitive emulsion. It's not clear to me if the first coating is also photosensitive, but there are clearly two photosensitive coatings on this particular roll, and one of them did not span the entire width of the film.

Looking more closely at the film, the space between frames also shows this coating of emulsion showing some degree of exposure, not covering the entire width of the film.

This is a closer look at the blob of exposed emulsion that's visible at one end of the film.

I don't know if this happened with all the rolls in this batch, or just this one. This is batch 260526. I'll be looking out for the other three rolls I have to see if this happens with those or if this was a one-off.

I didn't do any adjustments to the raw scans I made of the developed film, so they look a little flat. I spotted things that were identifiably dust, but other flaws in the emulsion were left as is.

The first couple of shots show some interesting artefacts. Black dots off to the right remind me of little concentrations of silver I've occasionally seen in wet plate, oysters and comets. There are a couple of spots where the emulsion looks damaged, one in the sky and one on the center body of the lighthouse building of the first shot. Then there's the lines. They're visible somewhat in the sky on the first shot, but much more visible in the second. They look like some sort of crystalization of the emulsion or something, and they're present on every shot on this roll. This 100% zoom of the second photo gives a better look at it.

The next several shots all show the crystalization to greater or lesser extent.

The next three photos show the increasing degree of difference in exposure at the edge where the two layers of photosensitive emulsion give way to a single layer, since the one layer didn't cover the entire width.

The final two shots show another interesting oddity that may be another form of crystalization visible mainly in the upper right of each shot.

My first thought when I saw the scans was that maybe there was reticulation, but I developed the film in my PiraMX Developer's Helper, which keeps the temperature constant, and the water I used was not at a signficantly different temperature. So I don't think it was reticulation.

It will be interesting to see if other users who got this batch get similar results, and if I get similar results from the other rolls I have. I knew when I bought these that it was an experimental film, so I'm not surprised there are flaws.

I shared this post with Ihor on Patreon before posting it, and he thinks the lines are caused by the plasticization he uses in making the emulsion. He thinks spending more time washing the film can take care of that. He sent out e-mail suggesting exposure at 25-30 ISO, dropping development to 12 minutes in Rodinal 1:25 from 15-18, pre-washing for 2-3 minutes, and 5 minutes of rinsing at the end. I'll give that a try for the next roll and see what happens.

Posted at 10:24 PM
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A Visit to the Autophoto Museum + Gallery in New York City

Last Friday Laura and I went into the city. One reason was to visit a new museum, the Autophoto Photobooth Gallery + Museum on the lower east side. They have several working old school photobooths which you can use. We're always on the lookout for these old booths. New Jersey used to have a few, but they're all gone here.

The first booth we used was a Model 14 that sits in the front window. It's in great shape. Very late 1950s, early 1960s look to it, a style we used to see a lot of on the Jersey Shore.

There was a booth to do color photos next to it, but the color paper is in short supply and they weren't operating it the day we were there.

Next up was a Model 21, very stylish, more of a 1970s vibe, bright colors and the like.

Up next was a rare Polaroid photobooth. For some reason, these never quite caught on, so there weren't many made. I think I've only seen a couple in the wild over the years, and not for many years.

I think this booth could probably use some adjustment. The photo looks underexposed to me and has a distinct green cast.

There is a Model 9 next to the Polaroid booth, but it is non-functional. The Model 9 was the first model produced by Autophoto, and is fairly primitive by comparison with later models like the Model 11, which introduced the ability to process more than one strip at a time.

There is a display in the back that shows the inner workings of a photobooth using a partial Model 20 with the front wall replaced with plexiglass.

There are also other displays about the history of photobooths. I didn't get pictures of all of them. I gather the displays will rotate. One of the displays was an art book of photographs of photobooth technicians.

Next up was a Model 17 that was only sporadically working. We paid our money and the strip didn't come out. In this picture you can see one of the docents working on the innards while on the phone with "Bre", the owner of the museum and most of the machines. When Laura had told me about the museum, I figured there was only one person with the assets to pull it off, and when the docent told me she was on the phone with Bre who was helping her troubleshoot, I knew that I was right, this was the brainchild of Breanna Conley Saxon, who was interviewed about photobooths on the much missed All Through A Lens podcast a few years ago.

She was able to retrieve our photos from the booth, somewhat damaged. We got a free sitting in the one booth we hadn't used that day, a Model 11 that had been converted to digital. The 11D outputs two strips of three photos each, a total of six photos, oriented horizontally rather than vertically. The photo quality is surprisingly similar to analog photo booths.

As a museum, it's good that they have an example of a digital conversion, but it pains me to see these, as it is how so many of these booths have wound up. The booth on the boardwalk in Asbury Park that used to be in Palace Amusements and in the basement of a mall on Cookman Ave. now sits in the Silverball Pinball Museum on the boardwalk converted to digital. Boo!

The last photobooth we tried was a rare Model 12, which produces larger photos, but only in a strip of three. The photos it produced look a little overexposed and washed out to me, which honestly is kind of in keeping with how they used to look back in the day. You could get some that were underexposed or underdeveloped, overexposed, or perfectly exposed and developed, depending on maintenance and the state of the chemicals. And that's one of the things that makes getting these so much fun.

The museum is tiny, just a storefront on a side street, and it was packed on the day we were there, about a week after it opened. The have a souvenir shop in the middle of the space.

I have to be honest, this was not a cheap date. Most of the photo booths cost $8 for a strip; the color booth and the Model 12 cost $12. That's actually in line with costs at other booths in NYC, maybe at the high end, but the booths are well maintained and in great shape. The souvenirs are also pretty expensive. That didn't stop us from getting anything, but it's worth keeping in mind if you're on a budget. Entry to the museum is free; they make their money on the use of the booths and the souvenir sales.

We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed out visit.

Posted at 3:20 PM
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